2:22pm Thursday 17th March 2005
By Lawrence Marzouk
"The suffocating anaesthetic of the suburbs; if the choice is between Richmond and death, I choose death," the author Virginia Woolf is famously supposed to have said. Replace Richmond with the suburban town of your choice Surbiton, Barnet, Slough, Muswell Hill and you have the current perception of the self-confessed literati about the spread of urban sprawl' during the last two centuries.
But how have these negative views affected the suburbs, and what can be done to ensure the continued prosperity of areas like Barnet?
These questions were discussed at artsdepot, in Tally Ho Corner, North Finchley, last Wednesday, by a team of academics, policy advisers and policy makers who were brought together by Barnet Council, The Guardian, Barratt Homes, and the Centre for Suburban Studies.
The council's chief executive Leo Boland who has persistently called for a shake up in the national and regional approach to the suburbs was among the speakers. He talked about plans to build 40,000 homes in the borough, and complained of the lack of Government investment in suburban areas.
According to Mr Boland, Barnet has faced two of the worst ever Government grant settlements in the country over the past two years, forcing the council to hike council tax by 23 per cent and six per cent successively.
Barnet is also on the brink of a huge regeneration of industrial wasteland and failing council estates. But out of the £3.5 billion needed, the Treasury is contributing just £20 million.
So what has gone wrong?
Dr Vesna Goldsworthy, director of the Centre for Suburban Studies at Kingston University, told the audience that crazy paving and estate cars' make the inhabitants of areas like Bloomsbury feel a little bit queasy and they are not alone.
According to Dr Goldsworthy, although 80 per cent of us live in the suburbs what the architect and city planner Le Corbusier dismissed as a kind of scum churning the walls of the city' none of us are willing to admit we have a love affair with them.
And it is this constant denigration of the suburbs that has seen areas like Barnet fall out of favour among policy makers.
"The suburb is always described as being inferior to both the city and the countryside," she said. "We should begin by admitting that the suburbs are what we desire."
The suburbs provide better schools, better housing, more space, and a range of other facilities that boost your quality of life, she said.
"But few of us seem ready to face the facts. We are in the suburbs exactly for what they are: not a stepping stone to the countryside or a cottage in the Dordogne," she added.
The line that demarcates suburb and city is in the eye of the beholder, she also claimed, and this nebulous term suburb', complicates suburban strategies.
Simon Hoggart, The Guardian columnist, once claimed that the suburbs start in Kingston. Handily he lives a mile or so nearer London at the gates of Richmond Park.
Jerry White, Professor in London Studies at Birkbeck, added: "It's time to call a halt to stereotypes based on prejudice and inference, and give the suburbs their due for the future of one the world's greatest cities."
Mr Boland, who came under fire from Ken Livingstone last year when he claimed that Barnet had received a raw deal from the Government, once again claimed if the suburbs are to continue expanding and succeeding, more investment was needed from central and local Government.
"I am here because I have got a problem," he said. "I am going to share that problem with you.
"We will become a borough of 400,000 people in the next ten to 15 years. All of these regeneration schemes are at some stage of planning, and most have developers on board.
"This is a massive infrastructure problem for a borough like ours. Regional and national policy has to address the infrastructure demands, needs and funding in a way that's not yet done."
Terence Bendixson, secretary of the Independent Transport Commission, highlighted how transport policy for the suburbs had been non-existent for many years.
Extra funding is needed for buses and the Tube, he claimed, but pay-as-you-drive road charging is the only policy which will make a real difference to journey times.
Mr Bendixson pointed out that more than half of the journeys in Barnet are made by car, and the 85,000 new inhabitants predicted for the borough will also want to use theirs.
"This idea that the majority of people in the suburbs go to Kings Cross or Liverpool Street every day is wrong. The city centres are no longer the dominant place for work," he said. "Suburban life is relativity self-sufficient.
"Ken Livingstone wants the population of London to grow by 700,000 over the next 15 to 20 years.
"That is an awful lot of people. A lot of them will want to come to Barnet and drive with more cars that will mean more traffic. Even those who bring cars are going to find it very difficult to travel to work in greater London."
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.times-series.co.uk